Wednesday, January 27, 2010

GRIZZLY KID

Dear Mystery Agent:

Eleven-year-old Tyson Driggs used to go on all kinds of adventureswith his best friend, from sledding to shooting at the range to prunejuice drinking contests. They had promised each other that they wouldgo up to Wyoming and kill a big seven-point elk this season, but whenone of their adventures lands them in trouble with the police, Tyson'sparents stick his best friend in a nursing home.

His best friend is his seventy-six-year-old gramps.

Everyone tells Tyson that his gramps has an overactive imagination anda taste for danger... and that's exactly what Tyson loves about him.In the nursing home, his gramps asks Tyson to go on one more adventuretogether: bust him out of there so they can go kill that elk. Butwhen Tyson discovers the real reason he's in the nursing home, theadventure turns risky for real. His gramp's health is failing, buthow can Tyson say no to his best friend?

GRIZZLY KID is a middle-grade novel complete at 40,000 words. Thecomplete manuscript is available upon your request. Thank you foryour time.

I love the sound of this, and your query is pretty good. I just have a couple of concerns. The third paragraph seems a bit jumbled at first, and I'm wondering if it might be clearer if you move the first sentence of that para. to the one above. Then later in that paragraph you use the word "real" twice in one sentence. You might want to reconsider one of them.

This is great! Sounds like a heart-warming story - nothing greater than a friendship across generations.

I think you can tighten it up just a bit and have a powerful letter. Some ideas (I've taken out the extra words you don't need):

"They promised each other they wouldgo to Wyoming and kill a big seven-point elk this season, but when one of their adventures lands them in trouble with the police, Tyson'sparents stick his best bud in a nursing home."

"In the nursing home, Gramps asks Tyson to go on one more adventure together: bust him so they can go kill that elk. But when Tyson discovers the reason Gramps's in the nursing home, the adventure turns risky for real."

You can also take out the line of manuscript available upon request. It's such a formal line compared to the rest of the letter's tone, and completely unnecessary. Agents are pretty sure you'll provide the mss on request. Otherwise, why would you be querying them?